wet our eyes with icy water, before a small hand bell was vigorously
rung for roll call.

There were too many drowsy children and too numerous orders for the day
to waste a moment in any apology to nature for giving her children such
a shock in the early morning. We rushed downstairs, bounding over two
high steps at a time, to land in the assembly room.

A paleface woman, with a yellow-covered roll book open on her arm and a
gnawed pencil in her hand, appeared at the door. Her small, tired face
was coldly lighted with a pair of large gray eyes.

She stood still in a halo of authority, while over the rim of her
spectacles her eyes pried nervously about the room. Having glanced at
her long list of names and called out the first one, she tossed up her
chin and peered through the crystals of her spectacles to make sure of
the answer "Here."

Relentlessly her pencil black-marked our daily records if we were not
present to respond to our names, and no chum of ours had done it
successfully for us. No matter if a dull headache or the painful cough
of slow consumption had delayed the absentee, there was only time enough
to mark the tardiness. It was next to impossible to leave the iron
routine after the civilizing machine had once begun its day's buzzing;
and as it was inbred in me to suffer in silence rather than to appeal to
the ears of one whose open eyes could not see my pain, I have many times
trudged in the day's harness heavy-footed, like a dumb sick brute.

Once I lost a dear classmate. I remember well how she used to mope along
at my side, until one morning she could not raise her head from her